Alpha_Alternative_School_1972–2012-Yumpu

Facing page:
Contact sheet of ALPHA
student portraits taken
by F. Robert Openshaw
in 1978.
As a cooperative organization, ALPHA depended on every parent volunteering
for regular shifts; this had the benefit of exposing students to adults
with a wide range of skills, from microbiology and mathematics to painting
and sculpture. Students called both parents and teachers by their first
names. While the school was not immune to problems common to schools
everywhere—bullying being one example—there was for the most part a
climate of openness, curiosity, respect, and acceptance that would have
been unusual in a traditional school at the time, and would be difficult to
find outside of a school like ALPHA even today, when many of the innovative
practices devised and developed by alternative schools have been
absorbed into the mainstream.
This project came about because of ALPHA’s 40th anniversary. Our idea
was to place black and white childhood portraits taken by F. Robert
Openshaw in 1978 alongside present-day portraits of the same people
taken at ALPHA during the 40th anniversary reunion by Michael Barker,
and to contextualize the photographs with portraits in words contributed
by the subjects and shaped by Ariel Fielding. Bob Openshaw, now based
in California, very kindly gave us permission to use his photographs. The
subjects self-selected. The result is a sort of ethnographic art project or a
personal history. It was not commissioned by ALPHA, nor was it conceived
with any particular agenda in mind, except to present portraits of some
interesting people with a common educational background.
ALPHA was a glorious countercultural experiment devised in an age of
hopeful ingenuity and driven by a desire for freedom. Remarkably, in spite
of the many changes that have taken place in the world since ALPHA’s
founding—and the ongoing unease of the larger culture with alternative
education—the school is still here, now nearly fifty years old, not just
surviving, but thriving.
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